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^t %%sm\m\\t\ |)rcsibent. 



i;i^ Ijtssassinati^d |i|{sidi|nt, 



DAY OF NATIONAL MOURNING 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



ST. JOHN'S (LUTHERAN) CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA. 



JUNE 1st, 1865. 



THE F a.sto:r. 



JOSEPH A. SEISS, D.D., 



OFFICIATING. 



FOR SALE AT 



No. 4 2 NOETII NINTH STEEET, 

PHILADELPHIA. 

1865. 



E4-5' 



' The tyrannous and bloody act is done ; 
The most arch deed of piteous massacre, 
That ever yet this land was guilty of." 




I. THE DEVOTIONAL EXERCISES. 



Introit.— " Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of 
my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my 
Redeemer. " 

Eeading of the Ten Commandments, Ex. 20 : 1—17. 
THE CONFESSION OF SINS. 

Almighty and most holy Lord and God, who dost 
command us to humble ourselves under thy mighty 
hand, that thou mayest exalt us in due time; in 
humility of spirit we confess before thee, in this our 
bereavement and affliction, how deeply, as a nation, 
we have deserved thy wrath. We acknowledge thy 
righteousness in the sorrowful visitation which has 
come upon us, and bow to thy holy will in submis- 
sion and self-abasement. Manifold are our trans- 
gressions, and the more sinful because of the many 
and great mercies which thou hast bestowed upon us. 
We have sinned, in pride and living to ourselves, in 
covetousness and woiidliness of mind, in self-suffi- 
ciency and too much trusting in man instead of thee. 



Profaneness of speech, violation and disregard of thy 
holy day, neglect of thy worship, unbelief and con- 
tempt of thy word, unfaithfulness to public trusts, 
dishonesties in worldly business, and above all, re- 
ceiving in vain thy wonderful grace in the Gospel of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, all cry out for thy indigna- 
tion and wrath. It is because thy compassions have 
not failed, that we have not been consumed. We 
adore the riches of thy forbearance and long-suffer- 
ing ; and beseech thee, O Lord, to turn the hearts of 
this people to repentance and supplication, that still 
thou mayest have compassion upon us ; not weighing 
our merits, but pardoning our offences. For thy Son, 
our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, forgive us all that is 
past, and grant that ever hereafter we may all serve 
and please thee in newness of hfe, to the honor and 
glory of thy name, through him who liveth and 
rcigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one 
God, world without end. Amen. 

HYMN. 

"Great Maker of unnumbered worlds, 
And whom unnumbered worlds adore, 
Whose goodness all thy creatures share, 
While nature trembles at thy power," «S:c. 

ycKii'TURE Lessons.— Isaiah 50, and Luke G : 20—38. 



THE GENERAL PRAYER. 

Almighty and most merciful God, we lift our hearts 
to thee, the hearer of prayer, from whom alone 
Cometh our help. We adore thee as the great Pa- 
rent of the Universe, from whom all things proceed, 
and on whom all creatures depend. Thou art worthy 
of all honor, gratitude, affection, and obedience. 
Thou art the blessed and only Potentate, the King 
of kings and Lord of lords. Thou alone hast im- 
mortality. With thee are the issues of life and of 
death. Thou doest after the counsels of thine own 
will among the angels in heaven and in the affairs of 
men. We, thine unworthy servants, desire to recog- 
nize thy hand in all things, and to be duly grateful 
to thee for thy many and great mercies. We bless 
thee for our creation, preservation, and all the com- 
forts and privileges of this life. As citizens of a 
country which thou hast highly favored, as well as 
sorely chastised, we adore thee for what thou hast 
done for us, and humbly submit ourselves to thy holy 
governance. We adore thee for all the way which 
thou hast led us, in darkness and in light, in defeats 
and in victories, in days of discouragements and days 
of rejoicing, and for all the lessons which thou art in 
all addressing to us. We bless thee for the steadfast 
devotion and obedience of the people to the Govern-^ 



ment, under their many burdens during these years 
of trial. We thank thee that when dangerous con- 
spiracies arose, thou didst bring them to nought. 
We thank thee that no invasions of loyal territory 
have been permitted to prosper; and that, in so large 
a part of the land, there have been preserved to us 
tranquillity and prosperity, abundance of the fruits of 
the ground, and the undisturbed enjoyment of the 
means of grace. We thank thee for the devotion 
and bravery and patience and faithfulness of the na- 
tional forces, on land and water, through whose skill 
and courage thou hast wrought such great things for 
us ; beseeching thee to return them to their homes in 
safety, to give them all happiness in their families, to 
fill their hearts with love to thee, and to bring them 
finally to the blessedness of thy kingdom. And we 
pray thee so to impress the hearts of all the nation 
with a just sense of thy providence, goodness, and 
mercy in the years just passed, and in our present 
deliverance and prospects, that all may most thank- 
fully acknowledge their debt of love and praise, and 
serve thee henceforth in humble obedience to thy 
word. 

And as thou hast seen fit, O thou mighty lluler 
of the world, in tliine all-wise administrations, to 
permit us to be deprived of the presence and fur- 
ther counsels of our late Chief Magistrate, and hast 
so deeply grieved the hearts of the people, turning 



^-5 



our songs into mourning and our joy into sorrow ; we 
beseech thee to have mercy upon us in this our ca- 
lamity, and to overrule it to the furtherance of our 
humility and peace, and to thine everlasting glory. 
Give unto us the gracious aid of thy Holy Spirit, 
that we may rightly learn thy will, and profit by all 
thy dealings with us. Enable us to have a right 
estimate of the good example and timely services 
vouchsafed to us in the life of him whom thou hast 
taken, and to be governed aright in all our feelings 
and meditations concerning the same. We thank 
thee for the great grace and faithfulness thou gavest 
him in his high office, and for the success with which 
thou hast favored his administrations to the preserva- 
tion of our national unity and the enlargement of 
human freedom, and beseech thee to help us to ap- 
preciate the high trusts which thou hast by him re- 
given to our keeping. Have compassion upon his 
sorrowing family and relatives, whom thou hast 
called to endure this sore bereavement. Cause their 
hearts to be lifted toward thy grace for support and 
consolation. Mingle the ministrations of thy love 
with the bitterness of their cup. Grant them, in 
this cloud of darkness, to see and rejoice in the light 
of life ; and lead them by thy heavenly grace to life 
everlasting. 

And for him who, by this mysterious providence, 
is now called to assume the highest office in the na- 



8 



tion, we entreat thy protection, support, and guid- 
ance. Teach him where to look for all he needs 
under the heavy duties which have come upon him, 
and give him grace so to administer the Government 
after the good example which has been set before 
him, that by wisdom and moderation, by firmness and 
clemency, in the due vindication of justice and re- 
membrance of mercy, the laws may be truly honored, 
the wounds of the nation healed, and peace and unity 
restored to the land for all generations. 

We implore thy blessing upon our entire country, 
and upon all its inhabitants. Have compassion, O 
Lord, upon those regions which war has desolated, 
and in which the weapons of rebellion were lifted. 
E-estore to them thy gracious favor. May the waste 
places be made to bloom again. Give to the erring 
and the vanquished the spirit of loyal submission 
to the rightful authority of the nation. Heal the 
wounds that have been made in their homes and 
neighborhoods, in their peace and prosperity. Take 
away from them and from us all bitterness, wrath, 
and anger, and make us all kind one toward another. 
Make us again one people, not only by union under 
the same laws, but in affectionate participation in the 
same national privileges ; serving together in the one 
faith of thy holy word, working together for the ad- 
vancement of the one glorious kingdom of righteous- 
ness and peace, and inheritors together of eternal life, 



I 



9 



through the one sacrifice and mediation of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Let it please thee, also, to help and bless all sorts 
and conditions of men, making thy ways known 
unto them, and saving them from their sins. Endow 
all rulers and magistrates with thy grace, and fill 
them with the spirit of wisdom and justice. Show 
thy goodness to the sorrowing and afflicted, and give 
deliverance to the enslaved and oppressed. Remem- 
ber thy Church in tender mercy, and refresh and 
prosper it with the continual dew of thy heavenly 
blessing. Send down upon all ministers of the Gos- 
pel, and upon all thy people, the needful Spirit of 
thy grace. Cause the number of thy saints to be 
multiplied in all the earth ; and let thy blessed king- 
dom speedily come, and thy holy will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven. 

Hear us, most gracious Lord and God, and despise 
not these our unworthy services, neither deny us our 
requests, which we present before thy Divine Ma- 
jesty in the name of Jesus Christ, our Mediator and 
Redeemer, to whom, with thee, and the Holy Ghost, 
be all honor and glory, world without end. 

Amen. 



SECOND HYMN. 

" God moves in a mysterious way, 
His wonders to jjerform ; 
He plants his footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm," &c. 



11. THE DISCOURSE. 



Text. — "And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when 
he died : his ej^e was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the 
children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days." 
Deut. 33 : 7, 8. 

Many-sided, and full of light, are even the sim- 
plest records of the word of God. This little his- 
toric fragment is rich in fruitful themes for solemn 
meditation. Even in the line of thinking to which 
the appointment of this day specially calls us, there 
are sundry very noteworthy suggestions. 

We here find that the most eminent servants of 
God, as well as other people, are subject to the do- 
minion of death. 

We here find that men high in office and favor, 
are sometimes suddenly taken away in the fulness of 
their strength, in the midst of their labors and use- 
fulness, just when their presence seems most indis- 
pensable, and on the very eve of the consummation 
of their most earnest endeavors. 

We here find that from remote antiquity, from 



12 



some motive of religion, or praiseworthy impulse of 
justice, gratitude, or admiration, it has been the cus- 
tom of good people to take special notice of the 
deaths of distinguished public servants, to express 
by unwonted tokens the sense of loss sustained by 
their removal, and to give befitting indications of ap- 
preciation of their qualities and worth on the part 
of their survivors. 

But I do not propose to dwell on these topics. 1 
mention them, as I use the text itself, not for discus- 
sion, but chiefly as a preface and starting-point for 
other observations. The mention of Moses, the close 
of his career, and the mourning of the people for 
him, calls up the character and mission of Moses. 
These, connected with the purposes for which we 
are this day in the sanctuary, naturally suggest the 
comparison of this illustrious personage with him 
over the recent, sudden, and melancholy termination 
of whose life the nation mourns, and the civilized 
world is moved. 

Who Moses was needs scarcely to be stated. His 
history is written in the best known and most sacred 
books of nearly all nations, and is ftmiiliar to the 
children of almost every home. His origin among 
a people who labored in the brickyards and served 
the Egyptians, his inheritance of hardships deserved 
neither by him nor his parents, and his providential 
preservation in early infancy, are things which we 



13 



learned in the first lessons of our childhood. You 
remember how he was committed to his mother to 
be nursed and reared for Pharaoh's daughter, wliose 
maids had found him in the river. You know from 
whose lips he was taught in the traditions and reli- 
gion of his people, and whence he drank in those 
sentiments of justice, faith in God, sympathy with 
the oppressed, and love of freedom and equal rights, 
which manifested themselves so strikingly in his 
early manhood, and became the guiding-star of his 
life and greatness. You do not need to be told what 
office it was that he was called to fill, and how he 
was gradually schooled for it by his training in 
Egyptian learning, by his military experiences in an 
expedition against the depredatory tribes of Ethio- 
pia, in his voluntary exile from the place of his 
birth, in his servitude and quiet meditations as 
keeper of Jethro's flocks, and in his sharp and pro- 
longed contest with the Magicians of Pharaoh's 
court. Nor will it ever be forgotten how he hum- 
bled the pride of them that withstood him, and 
gathered to himself the confidence of the people, 
and submitted himself to the promptings of his con- 
science, and enraged Egypt's haughty aristocrats 
with his proposals and demands in behalf of the op- 
pressed, and in the face of Egypt's armies led out 
the enslaved from the house of bondage, and saw 
the hosts of Israel's oppressors overwhelmed under 



14 



the waving of his staff, and silenced the murmurs 
of the rebelhous in his own camp, and rewrote and 
reasserted the great laws of right, loyalty, and jus- 
tice, and forced his way through lands which he had 
been forbidden to pass, and was tried by the treach- 
erous schemes of Balak and Baalam, and vanquish- 
ed the tribes who took up arms against his people, 
and conducted Israel through the wilderness to the 
very borders of the land of rest, and then suddenly 
ended his career, as he had been forewarned, amid 
the tears and lamentations of those whom he had 
delivered and led. 

And how closely all this resembles the story of his 
life, for whom this national mourning has been ap- 
pointed, scarcely requires to be pointed out. If 
Moses was of humble parentage, so was he. His 
father was a poor Kentuckian, who could neither 
read nor write ; and his mother was a lowly woman, 
whose highest literary attainment was ability to read 
her Bible. If Moses derived from his mother those 
sentiments and feelings which formed the basis of 
his exalted character and success, the same may be 
said of the late President. Though uneducated, his 
mother was a talented woman, of sound practical 
wisdom, earnest piety, and great devotion to her son; 
and to her influence and teachings, many of the 
traits which distinguished his life are traced by his 
biograph(^rs. A child of poverty and hardsliips, he 



15 



was early expatriated from the place of his birth, 
transferred to the wilderness, subsisted on scanty 
fare, and made to serve strangers. Though not 
" learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and 
obliged to borrow the books from which he obtained 
the first rudiments of his literary knowledge, he was 
thoroughly educated in the school of humble life, 
and familiarized with all its necessities and trials, 
which, in his case, as in that of Moses, was the most 
valuable part of his education. He, too, was a cap- 
tain and soldier in a campaign against tribes of ma- 
rauding savages. He, too, found it a great turning 
point in his life, when, in answer to the generous 
impulses of his heart, he volunteered to stand be- 
tween an innocent sufferer and his accusers, and res- 
cued him from a death which he had not merited. 
And if the controlling sympathies of Moses ran 
with the injured, the wronged, and the enslaved, such 
was exactly the temper of Abraham Lincoln, who, 
also, at an early period, gave decisive evidence of his 
utter contempt for the preferments and luxuries of 
enslaving power. He, too, was born to figure in a 
great crisis in the affairs of his country, and remark- 
ably called to execute a mission as pregnant with 
results as it was feeble in friends, resources, and 
promises of success. Even the complaint which the 
Jewish leader uttered with reference to the apparent 
inadequacy of the instrument to the end to be ac- 



16 



complished, had its correspondence in him for whom 
we this day mourn. " Who am I," said he, " that I 
should go unto Pharoah, and that I should bring 
forth the children of Israel out of Egypt" — " O my 
Lord, I am not eloquent." (Ex. 3:11; 4 : 10.) 

And that great debate, of which all the people of 
IlHnois were the witnesses, and in which all sections 
of the country were unwontedly interested ; in which 
he was resisted by perhaps the most formidable 
champion of the political arena then living ; in which 
all the powers of extraordinary genius, adroitness, 
and forensic skill were brought to bear against him ; 
and which first fully laid open the question of free- 
dom and slavery which the God of battles has since 
decided in his favor; — what was it but a re-enact- 
ment upon another theatre, and in another form, of 
that contest between the shepherd of Midian and 
the Magicians of Egypt 1 Indeed, contemplated 
from almost any point, the considerate mind will be 
at no loss to trace resemblances between his charac- 
ter and career and that of the matchless man whom 
the Scriptures set before us as the great hero of Is- 
rael's deliverance. 

Nor were the times and circumstances in which 
the two were called to operate, very dissimilar. By 
some strange forgetfulncss of acknowledged rights 
and covenants, there hud been a power put forth in 
Egypt, by which the multiplied posterity of Jacob 



17 



were divested of their freedom, and subjected to 
rigorous taskmasters, "who made their lives bitter 
with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in 
all manner of service in the field." (Ex. 1 : 8-14.) 
" And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the 
bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto 
God. And God heard their groaning. And God 
looked upon the children of Israel, and God had re- 
spect unto them." (Ex. 2 : 23-25.) In other words, 
the time had come, in the decrees of Heaven, when 
the heavy yoke was to be broken, the pride of the 
oppressor humbled, and these suffering tribes set free. 
So, on this continent, a new power in the world 
had risen up, in the Constitution of which, owing to 
whatever causes, or modified by whatever apologies, 
contrary to the convictions and desires of its framers, 
elements of oppression and undoubted wrong had 
been embodied and legalized, by which millions of 
human beings, brought hither in their misfortunes, 
were doomed to abject and unqualified servitude; — 
a servitude which, however mild, gentle, and benfi- 
cent in some cases and relations, or excusable on the 
part of those who had no share in producing it, did 
embrace, in its very nature, a violation of the com- 
mon rights of man, and was everywhere attended 
more or less with hardships and horrors, for which 
the inexorable requirements of justice demanded that 
a day of retributive revolution should come. To such 

2 



18 



a pass had things been carried, that, in some sections 
of the land, there was not a day in which human 
souls were not bought and transported as common 
chattels, and families severed without compunctions, 
and nameless crimes perpetrated without the possi- 
bihty of redress ; whilst the whole population of all 
the States was put under requirements to aid in 
holding tight the bonds of the unoffending, and in 
remanding to their toils and miseries such as had suf- 
ficient human feehng left to seek for freedom by 
their flight. What the founders of our institutions 
regarded and lamented as a wrong to the bondman 
and an evil to the state, had come to be accepted 
and defended as the sublimest beneficence, the foun- 
dation of liberties, and the proper basis of republican 
government ; nay, as the very ordination of Almighty 
Goodness, to touch or question which was considered 
treason to the country and sin against God, The 
enlargement and consolidation of enslaving power 
had come to be the engrossing object of national 
legislation, and the making firm of slave bonds the 
great test of patriotism. The press, the rostrum, 
and the pulpit, were being largely subsidized to the 
same interest ; and the free speech of men who failed 
in the pronunciation of its Shibolcth, in nearly every 
section of the country, was put under ban, and held 
obnoxious to all the penalties of this world and of 
that which is to come. Long had the nation sub- 



19 



mitted and yielded to the ever-multiplying demands 
of the "peculiar institution," until the God of jus- 
tice said, "/?! is too much^^^ and gave commission to 
his angels to strike it down, yea, and to sweep it 
from the earth. 

While Egypt was busy riveting the fetters tighter 
and tighter upon Israel, little did she dream that, 
within her own borders, there was a young mind 
maturing, who, with no ally but God, and no sup- 
ports but the righteousness of his cause, was pre- 
sently to scatter all her infamous legislation to the 
winds. Little did she think, that, from among the 
poor and despised whom her tyranny was oppressing, 
there was one gradually being prepared, upon whose 
plain unvarnished words should follow consternating 
judgments, before which the pride of her dominion 
was to be laid level with the dust. And httle did 
she imagine how, from the wilds of Midian, there 
was presently to come a sun-browned shepherd, by 
whose calm administrations all her great houses 
were to be filled with mourning, stript of their illgot 
treasures, and deprived forever of the unrequited 
services of those on the sins against whose manhood 
her haughty ones had fattened and exulted. But, 
when God wanted a Moses, there was a Moses ready, 
hidden away far back in the desert of Horeb, and 
who, in due time, received his commission from 
among the trees of the wilderness. 



20 



The same has been repeated, in our day, in our 
country. The picture rises to your view without 
my aid to call it up. 

******** 

One of the most controlling features in the cha- 
racter of Moses, which shines out in his whole ca- 
reer, undimmed by a single stain of inconsistency, 
was his self-sacrificing devotion to his convictions of 
justice and right, based upon his religious faith. His 
inspired eulogist has said of him, and meant in this 
to sum up the great actuating principle of his life, 
that he " chose rather to suffer affliction with the 
people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for 
a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater 
riches than the treasures in Egypt ; for he had re- 
spect unto the recompense of the reward." (Heb. 
10 : 24-28.) 

The same is, in a large measure, true of our late 
Chief Magistrate. Though not, so far as I am in- 
formed, a professed Christian, at least not in all par- 
ticulars, he was a man of decided religious turn of 
mind, who lived and acted in the light and influence 
of a practical faith. It was from his religious per- 
suasions that all his ideas were shapen, and accord- 
ing to which he honestly sought to settle his judg- 
ment and direct his course, whether in matters of 
private life or of public policy. All his opinions thus 
came to partake of the nature of religious principles, 



21 



which no personal hazards or counter motives could 
induce him for one moment to forsake, and for which 
he was willing to assume any amount of responsi- 
bility, and to submit to any degree of self-sacrifice. 
He died a martyr's death, but only because he was 
pervaded from the beginning with the elements of a 
martyr's spirit. He had learned, from the holiest 
authority, that God " hath made of one blood all 
nations of men," and that the immutable rule of 
right, as between man and man, is to do unto others 
as we would that they should do unto us. And 
his entire career, in all his public acts at least, was 
simply the earnest and honest application of these 
principles. Hence his uniform and generous sym- 
pathy with the oppressed and the suffering. Hence 
his early protest, upon the records of his State, in 
which he declared it to be his solemn belief, " that 
the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice 
and bad policy." Hence his advocacy, in Congress, 
of the right of petition for its removal, his votes to 
exclude it from the Territories where it had not yet 
been planted, his efforts to have it abolished in the 
District of Columbia, his indignation at the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, his ever-deepening ab- 
horrence of .the whole system, and his consent to 
undertake the leadership of an effort to withstand 
its insatiable encroachments, and to carry his prin- 
ciples into a national administration which had nei- 



22 



ther precedents nor records to guide it, and which 
the great mass of those in power stood pledged to 
resist. 

Nor did he count anything too dear to be laid 
upon the altar of that cause, which he believed to 
be the cause of humanity and of God. Nobler 
words, and revealing the whole structure of his 
moral thinking, perhaps were never uttered by man, 
than those in which he said to the people of Illi- 
nois: 

"The thirteen colonies, by their representatives 
in old Independence Hall, said to the world of men, 
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are bom equal ; that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' 
This was their lofty and wise and noble under- 
standing of the justice of the Creator to His crea- 
tures, — to the whole great family of man. In their 
belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and 
likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, 
and degraded and imbruted by its fellows. They 
grasped not only the race of men then living, but 
they reached forward and seized upon the furtliest 
posterity. They created a beacon to guide their 
children, and their children's children, and the count- 
less myriads who should inhabit the earth in other 
ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the 



23 



tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants ; and so they 
established these great self-evident truths, that when, 
in the distant future, some man, some faction, some 
interest, should set up the doctrine that none but 
rich men, or none but white men, or none but 
Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, lib- 
erty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity 
might look up again to the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and take courage to renew the battle which 
their fathers began, so that truth and justice and 
mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues, 
might not be extinguished from the land; so that 
no man would hereafter dare to limit and circum- 
scribe the great principles on which the temple of 
liberty was being built. And if you have been 
taught doctrines conflicting with the great land- 
marks of the Declaration of Independence, if you 
have been inclined to believe that all men are not 
created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated, 
let me entreat you to come back, to return to the 
fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of 
the Revolution. Think nothing of me; take no 
thought for the political fate of any man whomso- 
ever, but come back to the truths that are in our 
chart of liberty. You may do anything with me 
you choose, if you will but heed these sacred princi- 
ples. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, 
but you may take me and put me to death, but do 



24 

not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, — 
the Declaration of American Independence." 

And with what patient steadiness and self-posses- 
sion did he pursue his great mission ! 

Moses was the very model of steadfast fortitude 
and perseverance. Defiantly resisted, repeatedly un- 
successful, and again and again foiled and mocked, 
he continued the conflict, by argument, by expostu- 
lation, by miracle, and maintained his ground with a 
firmness of endurance which outwearied even Pha- 
raoh's hardness. And when his own people lost 
heart and confidence, and found fault with him, and 
basely conspired against him, and God himself, by 
reason of their unbelief, added to his charge and 
difficulties, by deferring the fulfilment of the pro- 
mise, he never once thought of giving up, but kept 
to his work, reasoned, waited, and devoutly perse- 
vered, till, from Nebo's top, he beheld the expected 
land lying invitingly at his feet. 

How like Moses, in these respects, was our late 
President 1 Who ever encountered more or greater 
perplexities, difficulties, provocations, and discourage- 
ments than those which beset his way ] And yet, 
with what earnest but passionless calmness did he 
grapple with them ! Look at him ; unexpectedly 
called from an humble sphere in which he had been 
content to remain, and suddenly made the head of a 
party for the first time, and, as it were, by accident, 



25 



coming into power, and as yet wholly without settled 
habits or traditions of official life, charged with the 
administration and maintenance of a government 
which one powerful state after another had renounced 
and repudiated, required to locate among a people 
who were almost all opposed to him, the subject of 
misrepresentation and unqualified abuse, waylaid 
for his life at almost every turn, mocked at for offi- 
cial awkwardness, maligned and resisted for his 
opinions and steadfast policy, tried by years of appa- 
rent failure before that policy obtained a single suc- 
cess, embarrassed by the zeal and boastfulness of his 
friends and subordinates no less than by his inexpe- 
rience, and that of the country, in such a state of 
affairs, pressed on every side by some who could see 
no force in his obligations as a constitutional ruler, 
and cried down on the other by men whose sym- 
pathies with treason would allow of no measures 
large enough for the revolutionary emergency which 
had arisen, often forsaken by his friends, and deceived 
and censured and conspired against by those whom 
he had honored with his confidence; he patiently 
endured all, and stood calmly to the helm amid the 
shoals and tempests, never once giving way to anger, 
to resentment, to despondency under discourage- 
ments, or to intemperate exultation over the most 
rapid and brilliant successes, when at last they came. 
In all his extraordinary trials, and notwithstanding 



26 



his great solemn earnestness, his good nature, his 
generosity, his kind feeUng, and his wonderful meek- 
ness, never once departed from him. Uncouth and 
inexperienced as he was at the beginning, he knew 
his place, and understood his own mind, and added 
with every year to his force of character, his self- 
possession, his executive capacity, and his magnani- 
mous devotion, until there shone forth from under 
that ungainly figure a grasp of principle, a directness 
of judgment, a dignity of manner, a solemnity of 
purpose, a goodness of heart, and a comprehensive 
simplicity and justness of policy, which arrested the 
attention and commanded the admiration of foreign 
courts, and which place his name on the roll of earth's 
best men and greatest rulers. 

Some said that he was a tyrant. And if inflexi- 
ble patriotic devotion, and the bold maintenance of 
the majesty of law over self-will, unruly sectionalism, 
and daring revolution, if untiring study and cou- 
rageous promptness in bringing every power and re- 
source of the Government into exercise for the over- 
throw of armed conspirators and the preservation of 
his country from ignoble dismemberment, if unquail- 
ing confrontation of a subtle and mighty attempt to 
destroy the most beneficent rule on the face of the 
earth, if daring to use power to save a great and 
useful nation at a moment when the last flames of 
its life seemed to flicker for extinction, if these, and 



27 



such like instances of patriotic and Christian effort, 
constitute tyranny, then Abraham Lincoln was a 
tyrant. 

But we have not so learned to count usurpation 
and tyranny. There is another spirit and style of 
action, of which there has much been seen and felt 
in recent years, to which these terms much more ap- 
propriately apply. It is the spirit which says of the 
black man, " If he complains of his wrongs, lash liim^^ 
and of the white man, " If he stands in your way, 
KILL HIM." It is the spirit which comes to the Senate 
chamber with loaded canes, and answers patriotic 
logic with physical blows upon its author's head, to 
leave him dying in his seat. It is the spirit which 
enters defenceless towns in the guise of peaceful tra- 
vellers, in order to rob, burn, and murder, out of mere 
brutish vengeance. It is the spirit which gathers 
infected clothing from the pest-houses, and sends 
them as honest merchandise to be distributed in un- 
suspecting communities, for the purpose of breeding 
death and desolation. It is the spirit which, with 
oaths in heaven registered to serve and defend, plots 
plunder, dismemberment, and revolution ; which 
schemes in secret, and sends forth its emissaries in 
darkness, to burn unoffending cities unwarned, and 
to erase them, if it can, from the earth ; which un- 
dertakes, in the name of freedom and religion, to 
subvert the very foundations of both, and to rear in 



28 



their places an illegitimate thing, conceived in self- 
will, established by rebellion, and subsisted upon the 
forced toil of millions consigned to brutal degrada- 
tion and eternal servitude. It is the spirit which 
incarcerates unfortunate prisoners of honorable war- 
fare in pestilential holds, stifles them with thirst, 
starvation, diseased meats, if not slow poisons, and 
plants tons of gunpowder under them that, in case of 
inabihty to retain them, they might be blown to 
atoms at the mere touch of a match. It is the spirit 
which gets into the house of a sick public servant 
with a lie, and stabs him in his bed, and deals out 
slaughter to his unarmed and terrified attendants ; 
and which, nothing daunted, holds the charged pistol 
to the head of the nation's legitimate chieftain, and 
blows out his brains in the presence of his family and 
friends, because it cannot overawe his noble purpose, 
nor drive him from his fixed fidelity to his country, 
his conscience, and his God. 

Men and brethren, I may be mistaken ; but if I 
have at all learned to estimate the character of hu- 
man actions; if I have any true insight into the na- 
ture of human rights; if I have any just perception 
of what enters into the composition of the praise- 
worthy or the base, there is in things like these, the 
very quintessence of tyranny, and all its worst and 
most intolerable infamies. And I pity the man who 
cannot justify, or at least excuse, any stretching of 



29 



official power, however questionable in other circum- 
stances, that may be requisite to save a free people, 
and a government based on equal rights, from fall- 
ing into the hands of such wrongful domination. 
Rise from the little muddy circles of party politics 
and prejudices, and look at it in the broad sunlight 
of eternal morality, and see whether such " chivalry," 
fairly interpreted by its own acts, does not unmis- 
takably belong to the sphere of the ugly, the brutal, 
and the devilish. 

It is not for me to say where the responsibility lies ; 
nor would I direct criminating words where they do 
not apply. But these things are the true fruits of 
secession, which show what it practically is, and in- 
dex what I take as a full vindication of almost any 
measures calculated to weaken and to vanquish the 
unholy thing. If some were, by rigid construction, 
extra-constitutional, they were not the offspring of 
resentment and vengeance, nor of self-will, and vain 
ambition, and love of power, which are the charac- 
teristics of tyranny. If some were unprecedented in 
the nation's history, so was the occasion which de- 
manded them, and the treason which made them 
necessary. And if, peradventure, certain provisions 
of the Constitution, repugnant to its framers, and 
applying only to sections which had, by deeds of re- 
sistance and assault, forfeited their claims to its pro- 
tection, were ignored, what good man would put his 



30 



country's existence in jeopardy, and imperil the cause 
of freedom in all the earth, by endeavoring to uphold 
what could but weaken himself, and strengthen those 
who were at the time trampling the whole instru- 
ment under their feet, and glorying before the world 
in their purpose to destroy it "? 

Silence as the antidote for traitorous proceedings, 
and the Constitution to fetter the hands of conscien- 
tious loyalty in grappling with them, is a political 
creed which argues ill for the patriotism of its con- 
fessors ; but it embodies the exact logic of those who 
look upon Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant. Another 
man, an officer of the government, and sworn to de- 
fend it, may use his place to manipulate for that 
government's destruction ; he may go and levy war, 
and raise armies, and make generals, and commission 
agents, public and secret, to strike the death-blow to 
its heart; and the Constitution, which ranks such 
proceedings with earth's foulest crimes, is never 
named. But when a God-fearing executive plants 
himself in the way of the destroyer, and exerts his 
proper power to save the most precious of political 
creations, and gives promise of success in restoring 
his country's unity, with its freedom enlarged, its im- 
purities purged, and its greatness augmented, he is 
denounced as a tyrant, and murdered for his devo- 
tion. Shame to such shallowness, and woe to the 
guilt of such hypocrisy ! 



31 



And whilst upon this point, let me quote a sen- 
tence or two even from that organ of our country's 
enemies, the London Times. " Abraham Lincoln," 
says that paper, in a recent issue, "was as little of a 
tyrant as any man who ever lived. He could have 
been a tyrant had he pleased, but he never uttered 
so much as an ill-natured speech. The war was 
attended with all war's horrors, but there was no 
cruelty at Washington. If the people of the seced- 
ing States were rebels, never was rebellion, except 
on the field of battle, more gently handled. In aU 
America there was not one man who less deserved to 
be the victim of this revolution than he who has just 
fallen. He did nothing to aggravate the quarrel; 
short of conceding the independence of the South, he 
did everything to prevent or abbreviate it. He recog- 
nized it as his one great duty to preserve the Union, 
and whatever opinions may be entertained about the 
war and its poUcy, nobody can say that such a prin- 
ciple was otherwise than becoming in the President 
of the Republic." (April 29th.) 

It would seem, however, to be one of the common 
laws in human affairs, that the most virtuous and 
useful men are the most hated and abused in their 
lifetime. This was remarkably illustrated in the 
history of Moses. How was he sneered at when first 
he appeared at Pharaoh's court ! How did all Egypt 
despise him for his miracles ! How did his own peo- 



32 



pie complain of him in their timidity, when they saw 
the Egyptians coming upon them at Baal-Zephon ! 
How did they murmur against him at the waters of 
Marah, and accuse him in the wilderness of Sin, and 
cry out in condemnation of him at Rephidim ! How 
vexatiously did they depart from him while engaged 
with God on their behalf, and rail at him, and take 
up stones to destroy him in the plains of Paran ! 
How was he wronged by the conspiracy of Korah 
and Dathan, and tried by the treacheries of Balak 
and his apostate prophet, and mistreated at every 
step of his self-denying career ! And so it was with 
all the prophets. Some of them were stoned, sawn 
asunder, tempted, slain with the sword, " being des- 
titute, afflicted." Even the blessed Saviour of the 
world was crucified ; his apostles were martyred ; and 
his great confessors, in every age, have been hunted 
down with wrath and bloodthirstiness. Even among 
the heathen, we find such men as Aristides banished, 
Socrates poisoned, Demosthenes exiled, Cicero ex- 
pelled and assassinated. And now, in this boasted 
home of civilization, in these days claimed as the 
culminating period of triumph for human rights, we 
have to add to the list, the kind, generous, passion- 
less, self-sacrificing, honest-hearted Abraham Lin- 
coln, who in the midst of his wonderful achievements 
for his imperilled country, and his great magnanimity 
towards its foes and his, was sought out, and mur- 



33 



dered, for no other reason than that he was good 
and true and great. 

He was but a man. God forbid that he should 
for one moment have a higher place in our affections 
or esteem than that which may lawfully be assigned 
to a maru I believe that there is real danger in these 
days, and one which is pointed out as the peculiar 
snare of the last times, of falling into a spirit of hero- 
worship, and an apotheotizing of human leaders, 
which is among the subtlest, easiest, and deadliest of 
idolatries. It was the great crime of some of the 
most enlightened nations of antiquity, and it will be 
the essence of the great apostacy under the xlnti- 
christ. We need, therefore, to be carefully on our 
guard in that direction. But, let us not fail to do 
justice to the virtues of the dead, or refuse to keep 
in kind remembrance those whom God has honored 
as great servants of their kind. 

It was a sublime work which Moses did for his 
people and for the world. He relaid the foundations 
of Israel's great nationality by new illustrations of 
God's covenant concerning them. He was the great 
reasserter of human rights over against the tyrannies 
of Egypt, and the great representative of Law at a 
time when the world had become oblivious to its high 
and immutable obligations. He was the great me- 
diator between Jacob's seed and their oppressors, and 
the friend who kept Israel from compromising their 

3 



34 



proper destiny. He was the great instrument in the 
Divine hand through whom dehverance was ad- 
ministered to an enslaved race. He was the great 
collector of the simple traditions of his people, and 
the reproducer of them for the enlightenment of man- 
kind. And, taken all in all, he was one of those 
sublime mountains of human greatness from which 
new eras date, and the most important affairs of time 
take complexion and shape. 

We are not yet in a position so well to under- 
stand the relations and importance of Lincoln's life 
and deeds. It remains for future ages to trace the 
bearings of his work upon the fortunes of humanity. 
But we know enough to warrant the remark, that 
generations to come will recur with grateful interest 
and holy reverence to the story of that rugged pio- 
neer, coming suddenly from the wilderness to steer 
the greatest of the nations through the greatest of 
its perils, and to set an example of wise and pru- 
dent administration, worthy of the study and imita- 
tion of all the reigning powers on earth. Though 
never once setting up to be great, and seemingly 
unconscious that he was anything more than a man 
of the common average, history will not fail to write 
him down a great man and a model servant of his 
kind. Though occupying now no very exalted place 
in some men's estimation, his administration will 
mark a new era in the history of this continent, and 



35 



the time will come when his name shall be che- 
rished by freedom's children as warmly as that of 
Washington himself. 

Had he left no other legacy by which to be favor- 
ably remembered than the magnificent illustration 
he has given of the value of talents which oft lie 
hidden in the humbler walks of life, and of the ge- 
nial excellence of institutions which throw open the 
paths of honor and official greatness as well to the 
low born and the poor as to the educated and the 
rich, the world would still have reason to bless God 
that he has lived. In this one respect alone there 
gathers round his history an importance to which no 
one can afford to be indifferent. The facts in his 
career open a fountain of ever fresh inspiration to 
improvement, fidelity, courage, and triumph, which 
must give strength to many a fainting heart, and 
fan the fires of generous ambition in many a lowly 
spirit, and thrill and cheer to greatness and to good 
many a one of whom the world otherwise would 
never have heard, and teach the proud, the high-born, 
and the wealthy, that their children are by nature 
no better and no greater than the children of those 
who serve in their houses, hew their wood, and draw 
their water. There is, after all, an equality among 
men, too prone to be forgotten ; and this fresh, in- 
structive, and finished life, now added to the trea- 
sures of mankind, reopens and recalls the fact, and 



36 



sets it up on high for the everlasting encouragement 
of the lowly, and the thoughtful contemplation of all 
men. 

This, however, is but a fragment of the case. 
Think of the terrific perils through which we have 
just passed; of the thunder-clouds of destruction 
which, time and again, threatened to overwhelm our 
homes and country in one common ruin ; of the 
great feebleness to which the cause of loyalty, free- 
dom, and humanity, had been reduced ; and of the 
almost miraculous deliverance which has been vouch- 
safed. Think of the gigantic proportions, far-reach- 
ing influences, and subtle sophistries of that long- 
organizing movement, which must be henceforward 
known as treason and rebellion ; of the universal 
ignorance of the resources and real mightiness of 
those despised States to which the preservation of 
the Union and the maintenance of the General Go- 
vernment's sovereignty were left; of the quietus 
which has been given to the exultations of the hire- 
lings and friends of despotic and aristocratic power 
at the prospect of America's humiliation ; and of the 
shame which has been made to overtake the insult- 
ing babblings of foreigners touching the follies of 
the North. Think how, in the midst of discourage- 
ments and disasters on sea and land, the contest for 
the majesty of law, national unity, and equal rights 
was maintained, until rebellion was defeated in its 



37 



disorganizing aims, disrobed of its pride and usur- 
pations, and bereft of its ill-directed power. Con- 
sider where this great nation of ours this day stands 
in the estimation of the world, and how sublimely 
it is rising up to the true greatness of its earUest 
manifestos, with one of its greatest stains and most 
troublesome causes of difference and dissension as 
good as purged away forever, and the great motto 
of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable," 
nailed to its flag-staff, and woven -s^-ith its emblem- 
atic colors, to signal hope to the oppressed of every 
land; and, when you have searched out the agency 
by which such great things have been wrought, and 
found the earthly well-spring of those successes 
which half the world beHered to be impossible, all 
will be seen connecting ^vith a name till recently as 
humble as it will henceforth be great, and radiating 
from the meek heart, the calm judgment, the wise 
administration, and the patriotic fidelity of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

And this is the man against whom it has been in 
the hearts of some to plot schemes of assassination, 
and, with a malignant effrontery for which the Eng- 
lish language has no name, to carry into execution. 
Alas! for which shall we lament the most, — the loss 
which has been inflicted by the audacious murder, 
or the awful depravity and bloodthirstiness which it 
shows to be lurking in the hearts of men who woidd 



38 



fain have us believe them to be our country's truest 
friends'? Both are subjects for our profound grief; 
but for both we have this great consolation left, that 
a just God is upon the throne of the universe, and 
that He will bring every work into judgment, with 
every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it 
be bad. 

I will not undertake to maintain that our late Chief 
Magistrate made no mistakes, or that he never erred 
in his estimates of men or adoption of measures ; 
even Moses himself did ill-advised things, and was 
censured of God for his conduct at the waters of 
Meribah. 

Neither do I conceive of all the surroundings in 
which the assassin found him, as good, pious, or 
becoming a Christian's dying-place. He was but a 
man,, lacking in experience in public affairs, and of 
that meek and generous nature which was, perhaps, 
too willing, in smaller matters, to acquiesce in the 
tastes and wishes of people less conscientious than 
himself 

But, in the great elements of his character, he was 
just, devout, Christian, and of a moral make and sta- 
men, to which few in politics have ever attained. He 
believed in God, in Revelation, in Christ, in prayer, 
in the necessity of virtue, in providence, and in the 
habit of settled dependence upon the precepts and 
administrations of Heaven; and his creed was per- 



39 



haps quite as real, as influential, as practical, as that 
of any who venture to sit in judgment upon him, 
and certainly as much so as that of thousands who 
give tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, but are not 
quite so particular in the weightier matters of judg- 
ment, mercy, and faith. God is his judge, and in 
His hands I am hopefully willing to leave him. If 
he was not so eminent a saint, he was an honest 
friend of his country, a sincere sympathizer with the 
suffering and the lowly, and a great servant and 
benefactor of mankind. If he was shot down in a 
theatre, he died a martyr to his country and to prin- 
ciples which good men in every age will honor and 
approve. 

It is time, my friends, that I should dismiss you ; 
but indulge me with yet a remark or two, before I 
conclude. The public mind is a good deal exercised 
about monuments and memorials to our deceased 
chieftain. Now, the greatest honor that can be ren- 
dered to his memory is for those who revere him to 
stand by the principles for which he lived and fought 
and died, — to reproduce his good, honest purposes 
and generous nature in themselves, — to steer by those 
landmarks which guided him to greatness. Other 
monuments will perish. The memorials constructed 
of nature's elements will pass away with nature's 
wastes. At best, they are but mute things, the 
meaning of which may be lost even while they yet 



40 



stand. But great principles and truths, practically 
wrought into immortal minds, and lived into the his- 
tories of mankind, will endure through all the ages, 
and keep telling their impressive story forever. 

Moses is dead, and to this day no man has ever seen 
his sepulchre ; but his genius lives, fresh, vigorous 
and active, and will continue to live on, increasing 
in dominion as the race expands and men are found 
to accept his ideas. No monumental piles could so 
perpetuate his honor. 

Nor can the fame of Lincoln wane, or his potent 
greatness fail in its power on the earth, if men will 
keep to the channels o£ thought and action again 
laid open in his life. 

And if there was that in him Avorthy of honorable 
commemoration, the nearest to immortality that we 
can give it is, to live it and act it ourselves, and 
to teach our children to do the same. If his ideas 
and convictions were framed to the statements and 
precepts of Revelation, and yielded fruits worthy of 
our honor, that honor is best rendered by giving to 
that self-same Revelation full sway in all our thoughts 
and reasonings. If he considered it bad policy, and 
a crime which cannot escape Divine indignation, to 
withhold from a fellow-being his native rights, and 
we think him entitled to our praise for his consistent 
and conscientious adherence to that belief, we shall 
praise him most eflfectually by making it the basis of 



41 



our actions too. If he regarded all men as of one 
blood, and entitled by their Maker to the same rights, 
and acted out to sublime distinction the golden rule, 
to do to others as we would have them do to us, and 
the credit of his course calls for significant celebra- 
tion, we cannot answer the call in better form than 
to take the same into our souls as the inviolable law 
of our lives. If his great devotion to his country's 
unity, and his patient self-sacrifice for its preserva- 
tion, demand some marked acknowledgment from 
his countrymen, there is no way in which that ac- 
knowledgment can be more handsomely made, than 
by the earnest and honest copying of his example. 
If he held secession to be treason, and felt it as a 
solemn obligation upon his conscience to make no 
compromises with it or with the doctrines of its de- 
fenders, and men would honor his judgment and 
scruples in the case, let them cling to these teach- 
ings as their political creed, and see that they are 
enthroned among the inviolable stabilities of our 
cherished institutions. And if he had no double 
conscience, one for private life, and another for po- 
litical conduct, but for all his relations kept to the 
one great and ever-binding law of right and con- 
science, and you think it meet to give honorable ex- 
pression to your appreciation of such simple integ- 
rity, the sublimest thing to be done is, conscientious- 
ly and always to conform your course to the same 



42 



Divine standard, and live to truth and right and 
God, in business and in politics, the same as in your 
charities and in your church. 

But whether any are moved or not by such refer- 
ence to the dead, let us not forget, that we all have 
obligations upon us, and duties to discharge, and re- 
sponsibilities to meet, in the directions indicated, 
which take their rise from our very position in the 
universe, and which it is our great business in this 
world to learn, acknowledge, and obey. 

We may be humble, feeble, and unnoticed in the 
great crowd of men ; but we are each God's work- 
manship. He has put each of us here for a pur- 
pose ; and we each must some day answer to Him 
for the manner in which we have fashioned our lives, 
and fulfilled our mission. 

AVe may not have nations to lead, or to organize 
to new ideas, or to guide and keep in the hours of' 
trial ; but we each have spheres of importance in 
which to operate, and little gardens which we our- 
selves alone can cultivate, and webs of little deeds 
to weave, in which our highest life is to be found. 

We may not, indeed, be Moseses or Lincolns, but, 
like both of tlicm, we can be ourselves ; and by be- 
ing honestly our true selves in Imnible things, we 
know not to what high spheres we yet may be raised. 
We have the highest authority for it, tliat faithful- 



43 



ness ill that which is least, is faithfuhiess also in 
much. We know by whom, and to whom, it was 
said, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou 
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee 
ruler over many things." (INJatt. 25 : 23; Luke 16 : 
10.) And both the histories of the men whose 
names I have associated in these remarks, preach 
and illustrate the same hopefulness. 

" Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time — 

Footprints that perhaps another, 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main 
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother. 

Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us then be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate; 
Still achieving, still pursuing. 

Learn to labor and to wait.'" 



III. THE CLOSING SERVICES. 



THE FINAL PRAYEK. 

Almighty God, the eternal Source of wisdom and 
purity, from whom all good counsels, all holy de- 
sires, and all just works do proceed; sanctify our 
hearts by Thy holy Word. What we know not, 
teach Thou us. Whatever is wrong in us, help us 
to overcome, and to put far from us. Whatever in 
us is good, aid us in cherishing, and in carrying- 
forward to perfection. Enable us to go forth into 
the world with the spirit of true religion in our 
hearts, and to spend all our days in Thy fear and 
love. May Thy Gospel ever be pixicious to our 
souls. And when Thou shalt see fit to remove us 
from this state of toil, trial, and danger, may Thy 
grace avail for us, and the gates of eternal life open 
to receive us, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and 
our Hope. Amen. 

THE CONCLUDING HYMN. 

" Guide me, O thou great Jehovah ! 
Pilgrim through this barren land ; 
I am weak, but thou art mighty, 

Hold me with Tlij powerful hand," &c. 



t 
s 



A- 



